


Empty

by Eightpoundsofhair



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Corruption, F/F, Takes place after Raising the Barn, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 01:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eightpoundsofhair/pseuds/Eightpoundsofhair
Summary: The moon was empty. Unbearably, suffocatingly, harrowingly, shatteringly empty. Lapis tries to deal with the emptiness after fleeing the Earth.





	Empty

The moon was empty. Unbearably, suffocatingly, harrowingly, _shatteringly_ empty. The whole planet was only shares of grey and white. Rocks Lapis's only company. The dreariness made the brightly colored, cluttered barn that she had planted on the grey ground when she had landed stand out. Even more harshly it popped against the never ending black of the sky behind it. The stars that dotted the dreary black backdrop the only sense of depth that the sky had.

At first, when Lapis had first landed on the small rock just far enough away from the Earth for her to feel a sliver of safety, the empty nothingness had been just what she needed. Just what she wanted. She needed to be isolated, to have nothing around her because the diamonds didn’t want planets of nothing. They wanted resources and opportunities and a dead rock like the moon was not a place for a new colony for a multitude of reasons. The bleak nothingness brought her comfort telling her with certainty that she was alone and there was no one to hurt her near by. Or at least not directly around her.

Yet after a week, maybe a month of staying and trying to busy herself with organizing the cluttered objects residing inside of the barn she began to notice just how close she really was to the Earth. She had avoided looking in its direction the whole time she was had been on the moon. It was hard not to glance her eyes and heart desperate for reassurance that it had not yet been destroyed and she reasonably knew just how close she was. Yet she had forced herself to convince herself that she wasn’t close. She was long gone, and she avoided looking at the planet to guarantee that fact.

However one day, after a long nap, she awoke and found herself face to face with the floating blue orb. In all of the avoiding looking at it perhaps she had begun to truly forget where she was. The voice in the back of her head telling her she was close had stopped being convincing enough maybe and the sight was shocking. She was so close.

Too close.

Se tried to get herself to leave. She walked with her gem facing the planet over to the barn, which she had also started avoiding looking at, and prepared to leave once more.

Yet it was harder this time. So much harder when the Earth, where Peridot and Steven and Pumpkin awaited a doom to which she couldn’t stand thinking of, floated idly mocking her for cowardice.

She placed the barn back down on the ground from where she had begun to lift it, rocks rolling away at the force. After placing it down on the grey rocks she walked inside on to its wooden floors. The room, filled to the brim with projects and meep-morps and collectibles was a stark contrast to the outside. Inside was a colorful world of energy in which Peridot and Pumpkin once resided with her.

The memory of this place and gem she had shared it with made the space seem dead. The objects that seemed to hold so much livelihood were wrong. They should be cheering her, brining some sense of feeling back to her and yet they sat still and lifeless on the floor which has turned grey with moon dust. It made her angry. The objects were supposed to make things better in her isolation by giving her something to do and yet instead they taunted her with memories of what she once had and had given up. Their potential diminished to nothing without their proper owners to establish them as comforts.

She kicked at the meep-morp that lay at her feet, smashing it and destroying it, endlessly frustrated that she had a longing to return to a planet of certain death at merely looking at it. She wanted to scream and kick and hurt things but there was nothing to express her anger in other than nicknacks that she couldn’t bring herself to harm for memory of what they once lent to her. And so she ran outside. The black and grey and brief lightness of blue filled her vision and it was all too much. Her brain jumbled as she ran, voices screaming in her head at the view of the Earth and memories of all that happened their flooding into her mind. She quickly ascended into the sky, rushing to the other side of the rock she currently resided upon so as to not look at the Earth or her makeshift new home upon the moon.

She didn’t quiet calm as she landed once more. She laid herself down on rocks and briefly glanced around. This side of the moon was emptier, she noted. Dark from lack of sunlight and not even a cluttered barn to keep her busy. She found herself sleeping more than anything else, for it was the only thing she could do to pass the time. Besides, maybe she would find the courage to finally leave and flee this side of the universe in a dream. However she was often less lucky, instead dreaming of days spent in the grass with Peridot blabbering around her about a new project or the barking of Pumpkin as she ran through their garden.

She tried to keep herself awake more. So she decided to take up thinking instead.

Her mind wandered in loops when she first took up thinking. Loops of why she felt bad and why she felt wrong. Whenever she could push one painful memory away another would pop up. Peridot. Earth. Pumpkin. Here. Lonely. War. Death.

She determined to instead focus on what she had yet to figure out and she eventually decided that she had always found Peridot endearing. How passionate she was. No matter how much it could bother her when Peridot ended up waking her from a nap or following her around with proposals of activities they could do to get to know each other or pass the time. The boundless enthusiasm Peridot carried with her was the first real constant in her life that was pleasant. Or at least the first not miserable constant.

The thinking and dreams reminded her of the meticulous way Peridot worked. How she couldn’t seem to get her mind off of a project until she had find it and how she expected perfection from herself. How she exploded into tangents that lasted hours basses on what she was working on and how she always wanted to explain its significance and importance.

She begun to remember the way she made Lapis watch her shows or star gaze with her. They way she needed to figure things out and the way she held her confidence in the Earth and it’s beauties.

She was untouched by the horrors Lapis had endured and while that frustrated Lapis, filling her with jealousy and frustration about why she was the one who had to suffer, it made Peridot all the more admirable. Her innocence was genuine and yet she still knew Lapis had experienced horrific things and she whole heartened lay wanted to help Lapis in any way she could. Lapis begun to understand why she had lied to her. Lapis had begun to understand why she walked on eggshells around her and put her happiness in jeopardy in order to make Lapis better.

Maybe she was being selfish but she wished she had Peridot to comfort her now. Even if she was never any good at it it was nice to have attention and much like her years in the mirror she feared that the lack of interaction was beginning to get to her.

Lapis missed Peridot. She realized that after countless more days of dreaming and thinking. She almost laughed, it should have been obvious. She couldn’t bring herself to leave, or even go look at the Earth or the barn. Of course she was missing her. And yet the idea still managed to surprise her.

A tugging was pulling at her from deep down. She needed to go somewhere alive. Somewhere less bleak. Somewhere on Earth. Wherever Peridot was. She _needed_  to go back. More than ever in that moment where she felt more lonely than she could stand and more drawn to Peridot than she could understand she wanted to leave.

Yet as she flew back over to the barn, now lacking any hint of color, nearly fading into the grey on grey of the moon she discovers that she couldn’t quiet move correctly any longer. She was being dragged to the surface as she flew and by the time she landed she was near exhausted.

The water that she needed to move the barn was too heavy for her to lift and her body quickly became too much for her to hold up any longer. She found herself falling into the planet and not being able to life herself.

She tried desperately to get back up. She could leave the barn but she needed to go back. She needed to apologize to Peridot and promise to stay by her side. Hug her and tell her how much she loved her and thank her for treating her well. To give Pumpkin a thousand kisses to make up for all the ones she hadn’t given her in the time being. To thank Steven for helping her when she needed him. To thank the gems for trusting her to stay on Earth. She needed to go back and defend her home with them. Help the gem and planet she loved so dearly instead of hiding away and loosing her sanity.

As she finally found herself back on her feet on shaky legs, wings spread and ready to fly she found her wings feeling lethargic and cramped, and after a few more moments she noticed them dripping. She desperately flapped, hoping to gain air while she still could and get her way to the Earth. But instead her wings continued to loose large quantities of water as she shook them in a desperate attempt at flight. Soon enough they were merely puddles at her feet and she felt more weak then ever. She raised a hand to her face to rub at her eyes in a hope that she was hallucinating and in horror noticed her shaky limbs had began to melt. Her hand lost large drops of blue in front of her eyes and she watched with great fear in her chest and a mild pain in her back as the drops fell from her body down on to the moon, adding the first hint of color she had seen in months. She found herself shaking as she watched more and more of her body mass escape from her and into the ground and she panicked. She tried to fly once more, but as she jumped up and tried to flap her wings she fell to her knees, splashing in a puddle of deep blue water.

She tried to use her hands to stop the melting that had begun on her face, threatening to fall in her eyes, yet she only managed to blind herself further. The dripping from her hands and hair getting in her eyes. Her panic came on stronger as the pain in her back became more pronounced and she blindly tried to do anything but sit here and die, but as she started to move she found herself herself to exhausted to sit, falling onto her face.

She forced her eyes shut despite the fact that she could no longer see while they were open and she tried desperately to ignore the deepening pain settling in on her gem.

She knew what was happening. She was corrupting. And she imagined there was a heavy possibility that she would shatter herself too. She had seen it happen before. To weak gems who let their emotions get the better of them. Weak gems with defects from the time they emerged. Not gems like her. Not gems in perfect condition.

She tried to scream as the nature of her situation further sunk in but found her voice was gone, her ability to call for help lost from her, and as she was forced to lay unable to move and melting. Her mind was screaming at her. Get up. Go home. Find Peridot.

The jumbled mess of noise all stopped as she heard a loud crack.

The pain in her gem tripled instantly, and she recognized the feeling of splintering in her gem stone through her panicked mind. She tried again to call out, Peridot’s name on her tongue yet once again she could not produce a sound. Could not even find the energy or concentration to shake any longer as she felt herself being ripped apart. She tried to cry but found herself completely unresponsive as the last of herself fell apart.

**Author's Note:**

> I was missing writing and I wanted to write a fic like this for a long time. I also wanted to get it done before new episodes.   
> Anyway as always thank you for reading! Please leave me a comment! And have a good day!


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